Breaking The Rules Part 12

"No." He didn't look around.

Mattie lifted an eyebrow at the abrupt answer. The bear had a thorn in his paw, but she'd be d.a.m.ned if she'd try to pull it out. Not right now. "Who is the woman?"

"Somebody I used to know." He still didn't look at her. His shoulders held a rigid tenseness that spoke volumes of fury.

She tried one more time. "What did you win?"

He stood up. "Nothing." The word was harsh, and he still didn't look at her as he poured a second cup of coffee. "Why don't you mind your own business?"

Mattie smiled to herself as she walked away from the picture. Yes, sir, a big thorn. Going over to the stove, she took another m.u.f.fin and peeled away the paper, settling in the single chair as she looked around her again with new eyes.

Through the window, she saw the empty corral. Even she knew what a corral was. It held animals of some sort or another, and she would bet money this one had been built for horses. It had been a while, though, since there had been any in there, if there ever had.

She touched the stallions on the blanket and glanced at Zeke. His tattoo was covered, but it did have the same stallion on it.

She glanced at the books. Horses. On the wall hung a calendar. Horses. She looked at his boots. Not the kind of drugstore cowboy kind of boots she'd seen so often in Kansas City, but the real thing, hardworking boots she'd guess he'd owned for a long time.

So what was a horse-crazy man doing on a motorcycle, flipping hamburgers in a nothing little bar in a nothing little town?

She didn't have a chance to answer the question in her mind. At that moment, he turned around with a secretive smile. "Rocky's here."

Chapter 9.

Brian Murphy shed his coat with a furious gesture. "She can't just disappear like this!"

Vince, peeking out the curtains of their motel room in Albuquerque, said, "We'll find her, Bri . Just a matter of time."

"We don't have much time," Brian retorted, shoving his fingers through his red hair until it stood on end. "I've got work to do. If I don't get that b.i.t.c.h out of my way, the cops will get me first. Without her, there's no case."

"I don't know why you didn't let me and one of the other guys take care of her. You could be home right now, drinking bourbon."

Brian narrowed his eyes. "This is personal."

"Yeah, well, I wish you'd mellow out. You're making me nervous." Vince flicked the curtain in place and picked up the phone. "I'm going to order something from room service. You want anything?"

Brian shook his head no, then thought better of it. "Bottle of bourbon."

He paced as Vince placed the call, unable to quell the restless energy that was his trademark. In an effort to curb the rage threatening to engulf him, he breathed in slowly, then out, trying to find his center.

For a minute, it helped. Then he thought of Mattie again and the murderous fury returned. He'd outsmarted business partners, manipulated the law and the police and outmaneuvered some of the most powerful drug lords in the country one naive woman would not be his undoing.

It did not improve his mood to acknowledge the mistake was largely his own. He'd made the unforgivable error of underestimating Mattie O'Neal, seeing only a sweet, alluring secretary with a headful of simple dreams. He'd accepted her intelligence as his due, a necessary component in a wife, but his focus had always been on the nurturing end of her personality. What he'd seen in Mattie was an uncomplicated woman who'd make him an undemanding wife, and take care of their children. He'd never intended for her to find out that his fortune was built on shipping black-market guns and pharmaceuticals to profitable and illegal markets.

Breathe in, breathe out. Who would have guessed Mattie could steal a car? Disappear for weeks on end? His stomach burned with a sick, furious churning as he thought of the wild-looking champion who'd whisked her away. She hadn't even given Brian a chance to explain she'd shacked up with the first available man to come her way. It had taken him almost a year to get her into his bed. A lousy year.

"Bourbon's here," Vince said, paying the waiter.

Brian poured three fingers straight and tipped it back. The heat burned clear to his belly and performed its miracle of clearing his brain. "What'd you get on this Zeke Shephard ?"

Vince, sitting down to a sandwich and a beer, tugged a notepad from his suit coat. "Ran a horse-breeding operation west of her till two years ago when the business went bust. Not much else on him."

"Partners? Family? Anything?"

Vince nodded. "Had a partner by the name of John Reese. He married some horse society type and took over Shephard's business"

Brian nodded, unb.u.t.toning his shirt. "I'll shower and we'll go see him."

Rocky, it turned out, was a racc.o.o.n. He waddled onto the porch and paused cautiously, looking around,then eased up to the small bowls.

"Oh, look!" Mattie cried softly, clutching Zeke's arm reflexively. "They really do wash things."

"Yeah." He covered her hand on his arm as if to hold it there. The word was soft. "So danged cute."

The racc.o.o.n took a peach in his tiny black hands and dipped it in the bowl of water, swishing it around thoroughly, rubbing at the fruit until he seemed satisfied and sat back on his haunches to eat it. He made a little noise, a soft growl of satisfaction.

"Once," Zeke said softly, his deep voice resonant even at such a low level, "I put some spare biscuits out there and he washed them until they fell apart. Liked to broke my heart seeing him try to pick all those sloppy pieces out of the bowl."

He slipped to one side on the chair, and motioned for her to sit down on the arm. Mattie did. "Does he let you come out when he's eating?"

"Sometimes. Not usually when I've been gone, though. It's like he has to make sure all over again that I'm not gonna eat him."

Mattie smiled. The creature was unbelievably precious. The slim black mask over his eyes, the alert little ears. Like a cross between a sweet dog and a clever cat. "He looks smart."

"They are." Zeke watched Rocky with a bemused expression on the handsome features, and the expression made her heart flip. "A neighbor used to have one when I was a kid. Caught it in the forest and brought it home. We used to take it pieces of banana and stuff like that. He was really cute.

"But people all over started having trouble with chicken coops and vandalism. One old coot went out to his garage one morning and found a huge mess, oil cans on the floor, sand scattered all over the place, the curtains shredded." He chuckled. "For a while, the cops thought it was teenagers, but they found out it was that racc.o.o.n. He not only learned how to open his cage, but also how to keep his owner from knowing he could."

Mattie laughed softly, but the animal heard her and paused, looking up from the peach with an alert ear c.o.c.ked toward her. For long moments, they stared at each other through the open door. Mattie found herself gripping Zeke's shoulder, felt his hand tighten over hers.

The racc.o.o.n dropped the peach he was eating, and Mattie thought with a pang that he was going to leave, that she'd chased him off. Instead, he plucked a new peach from the bowl and started scrubbing it clean.

Realizing how she gripped Zeke's shoulder, she forced herself to let go of him. "I'm glad I didn't chase him away."

He nodded. After a minute, he said gruffly, "The woman in the picture, her name is Amanda Shaw." He fell silent again, but Mattie waited without speaking, and he went on. "The guy is John Reese. He used to be my partner. They're married now."

Mattie watched his face carefully. His gaze was fixed on the racc.o.o.n, so she saw Zeke in profile. The sharp cheekbones with the hollows below, the firm, sensual mouth, the black fringe of long eyelashes above the troubled green eyes. His hair swept back from a forehead tense with remembered what? Fury? Sorrow?

Regret. The small lines around his eyes looked taut, too, and she wanted to smooth the tightness away with her fingertips. Had he lost his love to his partner?

"And the horse?" she asked gently, lightly. "What was the horse's name?"

He turned, looking up at her, the color of his eyes so clear, the emotion so cloudy, it made her stomach hurt to look at him. His gaze scanned her face with a sharp intensity, as if he didn't know whether he could tell her. "Oth.e.l.lo."

So close. The light coming through the door highlighted every detail on his beautiful face. She saw a hint of whiskers on his chin, a sharp jagged scar at the edge of his right eye, another through his lip.

Impulsively, she touched the scar on the edge of his eye. It was slightly hollow. It must have been a bad one, when it was fresh, and she wondered how old he had been. Six, eight, ten?

He didn't wince at her touch or look away, simply let her trace the old wound lightly with her finger, saying nothing. She wanted to know the history of this mark, and the one on his mouth, and the harsh puckered one on his back. She wanted to go back in time and be there for the child he'd been, bandage him and ease him, hold him so he could cry away the pain.

Something flickered in his eyes, something deep and long-buried, a wild flash Mattie responded to on some primal level. She opened her palm on his dark, hard face and traced the jutting edge of cheekbone, the smooth hollow beneath, the line of his jaw. Through it all, Zeke stared at her with a boiling emotion in his eyes she didn't try to name.

Sitting so close to him, she felt again his odd, powerful heat, and that scent of warming earth that came from his skin, from his body, an almost unbearably seductive smell.

She touched his dark eyebrows, each one, and smoothed her fingers over his forehead. At last, bravely, she touched his hair. Coa.r.s.e, thick, and somehow still silky, as if he'd washed it in rainwater.

"I miss the feeling of hair all around me," she said at last, threading her fingers through the length of his on his shoulders. "The way it swishes and swirls on your skin and the way it feels when you brush it." Lost in some strange place, driven by an instinct she didn't question, she smoothed her fingers through his scalp, over and over.

"Mattie," he said, lifting a hand to her arm, as if to stop her.

But he didn't. His hand lit on her elbow and skimmed to her wrist, and Mattie smiled. The rigid lines in his face were easing under her touch, the tautness around his eyes relaxed. The lingering boil of emotion in his eyes hadn't changed, but Mattie knew with certainty that it could.

Never in her life had she been brave or bold. She'd always waited her turn, waited to be asked if she needed something, tried to keep out of people's way and not be a bother.

And time after time after time, she saw the best coat go to another girl; was pa.s.sed over for a promotion that should have been hers; lost out on seconds at the dinner table.

At that moment, sitting on the arm of the chair, with Zeke's hair tumbling through her fingers and his eyes boiling with that dangerous lostness , Mattie leaned forward and claimed something. She kissed his cheek, gently, catching a tiny bristle of beard against her lip. His hand tightened on her wrist, almost convulsively, but he didn't shove her away; just held on. For one brief instant, she pressed her forehead to his temple. "I'm sorry you lost your horse," she said quietly, then forced herself to stand up normally, as if there had been nothing extraordinary at all in the moment they'd spent so closely unified.

For the s.p.a.ce of a few breaths, Zeke didn't move and Mattie saw that he was struggling on some internal level. He stared at her intensely, then looked away, to the valley visible through the door.

Finally, he cleared his throat. "Why don't we take that hike? I'll show you around the land." His voice betrayed nothing.

"I'd love to."

"Don't suppose you have a swimsuit in that mess of rags, do you?"

"Rags?" she said, and laughed. "No, I don't. Is there a place to swim?"

"Yeah. I'm gonna swim in shorts. You can probably make do with that dowdy old tank top you wear to

bed."

"Okay." Mattie took it from the pile.

He winced. "I've got half a mind to go to town and buy you some decent clothes, woman. I haven't seen

such an ugly collection in one h.e.l.l of a long time." Unoffended, Mattie smiled. Aside from the jeans and T-shirt she'd purchased the first morning after she stole Brian's car, and the dress she'd worn to play pool in, his a.s.sessment was on the money. "I couldn't afford to be picky. I've never really cared all that much for clothes, anyway." "Is that right." The phrase wasn't a question. Mattie looked up. "People who live in gla.s.s houses shouldn't throw stones," she said. "What's wrong with my clothes?" "Nothing except you wear the same white shirts and jeans five days out of six." She gestured to the uniform he wore now. White cotton shirt, b.u.t.toned to the third b.u.t.ton, sleeves rolled to just below the elbow, jeans, boots . "Tell me I'm wrong."

He turned his lips down and looked at the shirt. "They're comfortable and cheap and I can toss 'em out when they get messed up. That's just sensible."

"Oh," she said with a touch of irony. "Men are allowed to be sensible, but women have to be pretty. Got it now."

His smile was natural, teasing and utterly dazzling. "That's right."

Mattie rolled her eyes.

"You really aren't interested in clothes?" he asked, filling a backpack with things from the shelves.

"I'm really not," she replied. She sat on the edge of the bed to tie her desert boots.

He made a little grunt of surprise and put a can opener in the front pocket of the pack. "Not even some kind of fancy blouse or some go-to-town shoes?"

Mattie considered that. "Black velvet and pearls for the symphony, when I was a little girl. Red shoes like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz , but only if they were really magic. A dress like Cinderella in the movie." She grinned. "Does that make you feel better?"

He inclined his head, his expression musing. "I think you haven't let yourself want anything."

Mattie shrugged. "What's that old prayer help me to accept what I can't change?"

"I guess." He swung the pack over his broad, powerful shoulders. "Come on. Let's get moving before the morning is completely gone."

Zeke knew everything, Mattie thought later, walking happily behind him as he led the way downhill. He knew the names of trees and flowers and the tiny orange mushrooms growing in a grove of trees. He told her that if she ever got lost, she should look for lichen on the trunks of trees to keep her pointing north. He showed her the tracks of animals in the soft damp ground, and knew which ones belonged to which. It amazed and delighted her that he knew so much.

They'd been hiking for hours, following a trail barely visible unless one knew it was there, up the mountain, clear to the summit, which looked out on the surrounding land for hundreds of miles. Zeke pointed out trees and plants, outcroppings of various kinds of rocks, knew the name of each peak they could see.

Now, pleasantly grimy and winded from the long, long walk, she said, "I thought we were going to go swimming. I'm hot."

"Almost there," he said, ducking under a branch. He turned his feet sideways to gain purchase in the sandy soil, and Mattie followed suit, skittering and sliding a little. Warm, strong sunlight beat down on her head, and she knew her nose would be sunburned tonight.

"Her we go," Zeke said, rounding an enormous red-brown boulder. He gestured proudly. "The swimming hole."

Mattie couldn't help the sigh of wonder that escaped her lips. The clearing was cozy, guarded on three sides by glittering aspens that whispered a welcome. At their feet was a small green pool, fed by a spring that gurgled up from the ground, and the redolent, curious scent of the water filled the air with an almost aphrodisiac quality.

The pool and the trees, with the vast blue Colorado sky stretched above it, would have been breathtaking enough, but on the fourth side of the pool was a vista Mattie couldn't believe, a view of a high plain, far below, dusted with green and yellow and fields of orange flowers, and beyond that, mountains rising from the plain in furry blue. "Oh, Zeke," she said, and. touched his arm. "This is incredible!"

"Not amazing?" He smiled at her, the expression unguarded and deeply pleased. "Why don't you go change?"

She didn't need to be urged twice. Eagerly, she dashed into the trees, stripped and slipped into her tank top and shorts. This time she left on her bra the shirt was not exactly a good fit.

Zeke had plunged into the water ahead of her, and before she could join him, he surfaced, shaking hair from his eyes. Sunlight blazed over the slick expanse of his shoulders, blazed over his muscled chest and arms and Mattie was so dazzled she forgot her own self-consciousness and allowed herself to stare.